Metro north announced that in September they are installing Biometric timeclocks systemwide. All employees will be required to scan in and out and this includes Train and Engine service employees. I hear that this is going to be implemented on the LIRR sometime this year based on the Metro north model. Its about time and long overdue. The carriers are forced to pay employees back to their terminals-even if they don't return to the terminal. This leads to increased overtime and expenditures and its unfair to the ridership and taxpayers subsidizing the rail operations. Maybe now if employees have to travel back to WSY in the middle of the night simply to scan out, they will agree to negotiations modifying the home terminal rule. If you expect to be paid back to a terminal, then you should be expected to travel to that terminal. Not claim the overtime back and simply go home.

it would violate labor contract and if forced anyway, would employees only to refuse using personal auto.

Where in the labor agreements are timeclocks prohibited? your agreements have stated terminals and specific times for walking, deadheading, washup, etc. But right now you may finish in one place and claim a deadhead to your terminal which your paid for whether you actually went back to it or not. Now you'll have to actually travel to the terminal your paid to and wait until the book quitting time to scan out. You want to be paid and accept the money, so the railroad has the right to make you travel to that terminal and wait until the very minute that you are claiming and being paid for. A personal auto isnt the problem for employees. Having to wait an hour or two simply to travel to a terminal to scan out would be an issue with them. But they claim for payment, the trains back to the terminal as if they actually rode on them, but often simply go home. We have a situation in which employees are still on the clock because of deadhead time and laying in their beds. Now they will have to scan out and the LIRR will never have to answer for an employee on the clock yet sleeping at home.

An email was sent to all employees within MN today about the discussed issue above. In bold specifically, states that it will encompass all employees whether they were part of Kronos or not. There are almost 200 Kronos time clocks that will be replaced system wide and the project to deploy this upgrade will begin in NY and expand to the outlying terminals.

The riding public finally wins something! Employees insist on being paid for every moment they are working and should be expected to be on the property for the time they are paid for. Too many scandals over the years have caused this to happen and its time. Employees who were perfectly fine and worked every moment of overtime to build their pensions and then suddenly and coincidentally right before retirement, they all visit the same doctors, lie to them about their inability to climb on or under a train and claim they are disabled. They waited until a couple of months before retirement and purchased an Aflac short term disability plan. And then scream when they are caught performing tasks at home they claimed they couldn't do or their friends call the IG and inform on them. Now they will scream that they have to ride back to WSY in the middle of the night to stick their finger in a clock because they are getting paid for it. They will always scream about something that they dont like but the MTA always wins.

Tick, tick tick tick.......BANG!
Mr. Datenail has a point, whether it is palatable to some or not. It seems the "Good Old Days" are on the way out. Every facet of every contract is now in public (and managerial, to save their own a**es) scrutiny.
I feel sorry for the middle managers who will be told told achieve the impossible -"or else"- by the upper management ding dongs who don't have a clue. Better have a roster number when its needed!

Next time someone says government is more efficient at delivering services than the private sector, I'm going to remember this story....

DutchRailnut wrote:they had time clocks , cronos system

It doesn't sound like everyone was using Chronos, or at least the timeclocks. In the NYT article I read, it says track, bridge and signal maintainers were still using paper timesheets, and someone was keying it into Chronos or another system that fed payroll.

Absolutely amazing that nobody ever thought to audit $350,000 in overtime. When I worked with airport staffing at American Airlines, we scrutinized all overtime on a weekly basis, and also had flags in place that would recognize if someone worked 50% more or less of their scheduled hours. More got flagged because the person was likely a walking accident waiting to happen due to no sleep, and less because they were trading away more than the number of hours we allowed to go unworked while retaining benefits.

The Rail Road is not innocent in this overtime issue. As a matter of fact, it's most likely their own fault that this occurred. In the past, Engineers were typically used for certain Pilot jobs and the Rail Road decided to focus those jobs more on Track Foremen and eliminate the use of Engineers. Some Pilot tasks are craft scope rules, but some are not. This decision led to the use of an employee (Track) not limited to the Hours of Service "12hr rule". A Track worker can clock in on January 1st and clock out on Dec. 31st., without limitation. An Engineer is limited to working no more than 12hrs.

So what did they Rail Road expect? Metro-North revealed that it is lobbying the FRA to include certain Track Dept. employees to the included in the Hours of Service limitations.

The decision on "who gets what" on the LIRR, is totally political. The LIRR has determined that Engineers are the enemy of the company, and have embarked on a campaign to diminish the job and strip the craft of any work that is not contractual. The Carrier simply hates Engine Service. But the work has to be done. So they pick crafts that are in their favor and then complain when those crafts are earning too much. So now, the Track Dept. will be the "enemy". The Carrier will look for ways to exclude employees who have the ability to earn a politically unacceptable salary. But again, the work has to be done. So who will get it next? Conductors?

Sounds like a history of anytime "the company" has to focus on costs, the employees see it as "hate" or being "the enemy" and not as a problem both sides need to work to solve.

It's a textbook example of why government shouldn't operate transportation networks. Neither side (union or "company") is ever held accountable for the decisions made, and tax payers wind up footing the bill.

Contrast this with agencies like Coaster, half of Metra, New Mexico and Dallas/Fort Worth's TRE, where it's outsourced to a company like Herzog or Veolia (or in the case of Metra, partially contracted out to UPRR and BNSF), and there are caps on costs that the operator has to figure out as part of the contract, and in many cases, absorb if there are overruns.

Eolesen, just to point out why crews are taking this negatively, look at the factors it changess. It wont save cost, crews will deadhead and claim every second rather than going straight home and being less inclined to claim a few minutes here and there (not saying people won't claim OT on a ghost deadhead, but at a certain level people don't bother).

The only way the clock would reduce cost is if you believe that the crews were fabricating the arrival times on their deadheads. The only difference is some crews now cant commute when traffic is light or will be less likely to hang out for a one way.

The only thing this increases is the crew fatigue. The carrier has to pay the same deadhead no matter what. So its very clear this won't save cost on the transportation side.

Methinks this could possibly reverse the way seniority plays at the general pick. Suddenly the big-paying western jobs might be up for grabs to those who could only dream of owning them. But then, I have no idea what today's crew book looks like. And, I smell a lot of equipment trains appearing at the end of dual-mode jobs.
Just a thought, albeit maybe a bunch of nothing. Whoa, what about the roustabout?